User Home Pages: The Flessas Family Society "Papaflessas" , www.flessas.eu

The Flessas Family Society "Papaflessas" , www.flessas.eu

Updated January 16, 2008

The Ancient History of the Distinguished Surname Flessas.The distinguished surname Flessas can be traced back to Ephesus, Asia Minor,in early 1100's,the Peloponnisos of Greece,in the 1700's,the island of Cyprus, and the province of Brandenburg Germany in the 1500's. Historically known as Brandenburg-Prussia, this region was a "Mark" or border region and first named Brandenburg after the Slavic chieftain's seat of Brendaburg. Brandenburg eventually expanded to incorporate the Rhineland, Westphalia, Hanover, and parts of Saxony, Pomerania, Silesia, and Hessen. The Germanic Semnonen tribe lived here before moving south to Swabia. The Slavic tribe of the Heveler, which gave the river Havel its name, took over this terri-tory until the arrival of the Christian Saxons who colo-nized this area east of the Elbe.Flessas’s were found in Asia Minor in the early 1100’s, in Venetia, Italy, and in Prussia where the name emerged from medieval times as one of the notable fam-ily names of the region, like: The Family of Herman Flessen (1433-?)Of Herspuk Germany, a priest in Klamand-Velten Germany.The family of Floßmeister Jacob Flessa from Bursting and his son Hans. They lived around 1540 in the Floßbüchlein of the town Kulmbacri. Hans had 12 children and through them the name Flessa spread in larger areas of Germany. Farmer Marthes Flessa (1569-1612) belonged to this big family.· The family of Nikolaus Flessaus senior, of Monchbergensis (1536-1599) and Nikolaus Flessaus, Junior, a preacher from Altere, Germany are the pa-triarchs of a large Flessa family in Germany.In the Peloponnisos of Greece, the surname Flessas appears for the first time in the early 1700's with the family of Gregory Papaflessas ("Papa" here is an ecclesiastical title meaning "Father" for Gregory was a Greek Orthodox priest). His father Demetrios George Flessas, from Poliani, Kalamon, had 28 children from two mariages and he is the patriarch ofthe Historic Flessas family in Greece. Papaflessas was one of the primary organizers of the Greek War of Independence (1821-1832) from the Ottoman Empire.Papaflessas consciously sacrificed himself in the great battle of Maniaki, Greece where the Ottoman army of 25,000 men defeated Papaflessas and his 600 troops on May 20, 1825.A major aspect of family names is the fact that the spelling or pronunciation of a name may change throughout its history. The addition of a prefix or suffix to the root name (particularly for German names) became a common indicator of a person's character, place of origin, occupation, or religious beliefs.During the middle Ages, scribes often recorded names simply by virtue of its sound and, thus, there are variations on the name Flessas (e.g., Fliess, Flessas, Flessa, Flessias, Flesias, Phlessas, Flessopoulos, Plessas, Papaflessas, Fliessen, Fliessenhausen, Vices, Vieeschau-wer, Vlissingen, Flieshen, Fless, Flessen, Flesser, Flessak and Flassus). Throughout the centuries, many people migrated to other parts of Germany and also to North America. The migration to the New World began around 1650 and continued after the war, when most Germans were ex-pelled from the eastern regions by the Polish or Russian governments. Pockets of German settlement include Pennsylvania, Texas, New York, Illinois, California, and Ohio. In Canada, German settlement cantered on On-tario and the Prairies. Settlers bearing the family name Flessas include settlers who travelled to the New World and established themselves along the eastern seaboard of the United States and Canada in the 18th and 19th centuries.According to German linguists, the name Flessa derives from the German word "floss" defined here as "raft" as in a wooden raft, made from logs, float-ing upon a river. The Flessas’s at this time were "Flosserei”, i.e., craftsmen guiding wood on rivers from Bavarian mountains to pulp and paper mills, thus receiving their name " Flessa" by virtue of t